Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

So now that the teen

So now that the teen sex debate is dying down, I'm going to weigh in.

My fundamental belief about the whole thing is that you shouldn't have sex unless you're prepared to have a baby. Not that I'm against birth control, mind you; but it isn't 100%. And I don't think that you should be engaging in it unless you are willing to cope with the baby that might result. I'll be generous with exceptions for those with health problems. But as a general rule, there's where I stand.

And 99.999999% of teenagers in our society are both unwilling and unable to do what is necessary to raise a child well.

Oh, I agree with Our Fearless Leader that this is because our society infantilizes teenagers. But I don't think that that's going to change any time soon.

Teenage girls, historically, were literally little women -- they followed Momma around cooking, cleaning, taking care of younger siblings, working in the garden, etc. When my farm-raised Grandmother wasn't in school, she had a full workday that was pretty much the same as her mother's.

The boys were little men, doing a man's work by the time they were fourteen or fifteen.

In a community like that, both boys and girls knew exactly what was likely to come from having sex, and were able to comprehend the consequences emotionally as well as intellectually.

Those days are simply not coming back.

It's not practical for teenagers to work with adults, for one thing, and even if it were, it does take longer for someone to garner the education necessary to make a career choice than it used to; my great-grandparents could start working at 13 or so because they didn't really get career choices. They could stay on the farm, or they could try to find a farm a ways down the road. That was what they'd been taught how to do. Imagine, now, sticking with the career choice you made at 13. Oh, sure, those of us with Masters degrees and such don't have to. But your average metalworker or cop is pretty much doing what he decided to do at the age of 21.

And there aren't a passel of younger children around to give your daughters a close-up view of what having one of your own to care for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with no time off for good behavior, might look like. The families who have them, by and large, have already been infantilized by the welfare system. Nor does your average fourteen year old really know what it might be like to drive a forklift for the next 30 years to keep junior in diapers and baby wipes and such. We wouldn't actually want him to -- such work is too dangerous for children in a rich society, and our bodies aren't really up to the strain of physical labor for our new, improved lifespans.

I agree that the legal system that has turned our schools into baby-sitters is a contributing factor. But not the only one. Society really is different from what it was 100 years ago. A farm community is totally different from an urban environment. Girls were able to become mothers earlier in large part because there were a lot of family members -- or friends -- around to teach her what to do, and make sure that she didn't go off the deep-end. Not possible when those women all have jobs outside the home. Her husband was also within shouting distance. It's a completely different way to raise kids. Almost no one now has the kind of support network that made intermediate adulthood possible.

Girls also menstruated at 14 or 16, and probably ovulated irregularly for years after that, making it much less likely that very young girls would get pregnant in the first place. Which is good, because girls under 16 or 17 aren't physically ready to have babies, whether or not they have a job and an apartment.

So while I agree completely that the problem is not teen sex per se, I think that morally neutral distribution of birth control is not the answer; not even if you make the little nippers get a taste of real life with after school jobs. And I'm not talking about Christian values, so calm down. I'm talking about basic human values like responsibility. The affluent girls in my high school who had abortions were no more responsible than the poor girls at John F. Kennedy High School down the road who had babies they weren't equipped to care for. And it's hardly surprising that the sex education in both schools was focused entirely on you: Are you ready for sex? How do you feel? Do you understand that it's a serious step? Potential babies, and how you intended to dispose of them, were glossed over in favor of condom demonstrations.

Catholic readers may disagree, but I view birth control as the responsible action of mitigating possible consequences. But it doesn't eliminate them; merely reduces the possibility. I personally know of two pill-users, both of whom swear they never missed a dose, who are currently proud mothers of babies they didn't intend to have. And neither teens, nor sex education, really focus on those consequences as much as they should.

But then, I'm not sure there's much you can do. You can certainly change the system to make kids more responsible; I'm all for it. Personally, I think that everyone should work for four years before they go to college; it certainly focused my mind wonderfully in b-school. Overall, though, I think that our whole culture is infantilized; teen sex is just a symptom. Read nineteenth century literature and you realize that most people didn't expect to be happy; they expected to be good, and hoped happiness would come of it. These days, we've got that reversed. It doesn't seem to have made us all that much happier (I'd credit prosperity for any net increase in happiness). But is it any wonder that our children seem to have difficulty conceiving of any but the most immediate pleasures?

Posted by Jane Galt at May 31, 2002 1:22 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>